One of the things we ought to do is open up more trade schools.

 The kinds of places that actually teach young people to actually do something.

Almost daily I hear people gripe about how much it costs to hire someone competent to do something for them. Just yesterday I read a rant about how some guy had three HVAC guys come in and give them a bid to fix his furnace. The cheapest one he was given came to the sum of $1200.

Now the fact that the guy doing the ranting went out and bought the part for $80 and installed it himself speaks highly of the guy but is neither here nor there.

Not a whole lot of people are competent like he is and can install the necessary parts. Most people these days are klutzes when it comes to fixing things unlike the previous generations.

Still, there is quite a market out there for people that can do things and a plumber, electrician or repairman will never go hungry unless the market floods which is not likely.

There are an awful lot of people out there with little or no skills that are working at jobs that can be performed by people living in mud huts and the truth is that in a free economy a person that can be replaced by a person living in a mud hut really has two choices. He can either live in a mud hut or learn a skill.

There are an awful lot of young people out there that are not of the ilk to go to college for any number of reasons yet would make very capable tradesmen. A talented cabinetmaker can do quite well working in a custom shop and I have heard that good cabinetmakers are hard to find.

One of the things about the building trades is that many of them are interchangable because if you know how to use a square you can do an awful lot. You can form, frame, sheetrock, do finish carpentry, additions and remodels.

A person with those skills can do well and take care of himself and his family.

Back in the day the local Vo-Tech was looked down upon because when my father went to school Vo-Techs were generally places that taught the learning disabled how to do a few things. (My father said that back in his day they taught idiots how to tinker with broken alarm clocks)

Yet when I was growing up they had changed and even my dad agreed that Vo-Tech schools were pretty good places for young people to learn a trade. I've met a number of Vo-Tech grads and they all seemed pretty sharp to me.

Still, when I was a kid people that went to Vocational schools were looked still down on somewhat.

Funny thing is that a lot of those kids I grew up with that went the vocational school route did well for themselves.

There are a lot of kids out there that have an aptitude for working with their hands and the present day schools smply do not interest them. School never really interested me, either except for a few courses yet when I got out in the real world I discovered a number of things that I had an aptitude for and went after it.

I kept adding skills as I developed interests and finally became what I am today which is a wayward sailor, but I suppose that's OK. There is somewhat a shortage of good sailors and a definite shortage of wayward ones and that seems to have kept me employed for the past few decades.

Still, I attribute my mild success to being able to do something that fullfills a need and that there are a large number of kids getting out of high school that can't even tie their own shoes.

I know a teacher in a Vo-Tech school and he told me of a mother that told him that she was thinking of sending her son to the school because he lacked math skills.

"Then he'll do poorly here," he told her. "Because when things go wrong on the job you have to take out your pencil and grab a scrap of wood or paper and figure the numbers out."

He also pointed out to her that part of the course included classes in bidding jobs and general business classes for running a small construction outfit. If her kid couldn't count he'd do poorly in the course.

There really isn't a whole lot of room for dummies in todays Vo-Tech education.

One of the problems of getting people interested in sending their kids to a Vo-Tech is that parents seem to have an unrealistic attitude. It seems to be "Tech school is OK for Bobby down the street, but MY kid is going to college."

That's fine if their kid has real plans on getting a useful education but the truth is we are already well overstocked with puppetry, photography, English and basket weaving majors. We have enough of those to staff every third-world nation in the world including Chicago and California.

I can look at the guy that mows lawns in my area to use as an example. He got a four year degree by mowing lawns to put himself through school and when he graduated he saw what he could do financially with his degree so he expanded the lawn mowing business that put him through school and that is what he does now.

We need hard science people in this country and we need them bad. We're importing engineers from India as fast as the airplanes land at JFK.

My neighbor's daughter just graduated from college as a civil engineer and I had to go outside and help her beat the people offering her jobs away with my baseball bat. I got the guy from the Minnesota DPW with a pretty good one upside the head because he offered her only about 75K to start.

Still, that little girl had some sense. She looked for a need and got a degree that was needed to fill the need. Her sister is doing the same thing. She's headed into mechanical engineering. Betcha their dad is looking forward to having his kids support him in his old age with the leftover pocket change the kids toss his way.

Still, there are a lot of that either don't have the desire, the aptitude or the interest to spend four years in the classroom and leaving high school with no particular skills really isn't a path to immediate success.

One of the the guys that fixed my pickup is also a part time teacher in a local Vo-Tech, actually the Vocational department of the local community college told me that all of the competent and a lot of the not so competent grads of the body and fender school are snapped right up by businesses all over town

He also told me that the same holds true for the youngsters that complete the auto mechanics course. Incidentally cars these days are complicated and most people can't fix their own anymore so there is going to always be a need for mechanics for as long as we drive cars.

Parents are going to have to stop and take a look at their kids and rethink a minute. Unless their kid has a plan and a marketable degree in mind sending him or her off to the college of their choice is only going to be a waste of money.

There is nothing in the world wrong with being a tradesman and what is funny to think of is that in many instances the person hiring the tradesman he is hoping his kids do not become is in fact financially better off than he is.

As time passes and we keep sending kids off to college to get unmarketable degrees we may see the light but I'll bet it isn't coming soon to a theater near you.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html